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WOMEN INVESTORS AND THE VIRGINIA COMPANY IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2019

MISHA EWEN Open the ORCID record for MISHA EWEN [Opens in a new window]
MISHA EWEN*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
Department of History, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, m13 9plmisha.ewen@manchester.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article explores the role of women investors in the Virginia Company during the early seventeenth century, arguing that women determined the success of English overseas expansion by ‘adventuring’ not just their person, but their purse. Trading companies relied on the capital of women, and yet in seminal work on Virginia Company investors women have received no attention at all. This is a significant oversight, as studying the women who invested in trading companies illuminates broader issues regarding the role of women in the early English empire. This article explores why and how two women from merchant backgrounds, Rebecca Romney (d. 1644) and Katherine Hueriblock (d. 1639), managed diverse, global investment portfolios in the period before the Financial Revolution. Through company records, wills, letters, court depositions, and a surviving church memorial tablet, it reconstructs Romney's and Hueriblock's interconnected interests in ‘New World’ ventures, including in Newfoundland, the North-West Passage Company, Virginia colony, and sugar trade. Studying women investors reveals how trade and colonization shaped economic activity and investment practices in the domestic sphere and also elucidates how women, in their role as investors, helped give birth to an English empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 62 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 853 - 874
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

Aske Brock, Amy Froide, Sasha Handley, Jason Peacey, Susanah Shaw Romney, and Edmond Smith all offered feedback, encouragement, and valuable insight at many different stages of this research. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their comments. The completion of this research was only made possible by generous funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (University College London) and the Leverhulme Trust (University of Kent), as well as short-term fellowships at the Huntington Library and Folger Library.

References

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24 See Rabb, Enterprise and empire, pp. 59–61, 104. Because of the steep price of membership to the EIC (£200), less experienced investors would sometimes ‘adventure’ together with more experienced merchants. See Edmond Smith, ‘Networks of the East India Company, 1600–1625’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 2015), ch. 2.

25 Edmond Smith, ‘The global interests of London's commercial community, 1599–1625: investment in the East India Company’, Economic History Review, https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12665, at n. 5, pp. 13–15.

26 The second charter of Virginia (1609), in Brown, Alexander, ed., The genesis of the United States (2 vols., New York, NY, 1964), i, pp. 206–37Google Scholar; and Kupperman, Jamestown project, pp. 242–3.

27 Kingsbury, ed., Records, iii, pp. 87, 89.

28 TNA, will of John West, Grocer of London, 10 Sept. 1613, PROB 11/122/205.

29 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), parish registers: St Giles Cripplegate, City of London, 17 Apr. 1593, P69/GIS/A/002/MS06419/001; and LMA, marriage allegations, diocese of London, 7 Mar. 1603, DL/A/D/002/MS10091/002.

30 Thomas Lappidge was a Silkweaver, and William Parker a Brewer. LMA, will of Samuel Ramsden, Gent., 20 Oct. 1606, MS 9172/23B; TNA, will of John Worsley, Brewer, 26 Aug. 1603, PROB 11/102. Milicent Young had a daughter, Dorcas Worsley, indicating that these women were the kin of John Worsley. TNA, will of Milicent St John, widow of West Kington, Wiltshire, 11 May 1636, PROB 11/171/70.

31 Kingsbury, ed., Records, i, p. 235, iii, p. 60. For her marriage to St John in 1609, Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Act Book, 20 Dec. 1609, D1/39/1/37, fo. 130.

32 They included the countesses of Bedford, Pembroke, and Derby. Roper, English empire, pp. 74, 77–8.

33 The third charter of Virginia (1612), in Brown, ed., Genesis of the United States, ii, pp. 540–53; also the complete list of shareholders in 1618, with amount of stock, in Kingsbury, ed., Records, iii, pp. 79–90. For Bedford's investment in the Bermuda Company, see Helen Payne, ‘Russell [née Harrington], Lucy, countess of Bedford (bap. 1581, d. 1627)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (ODNB).

34 Sharpe, ‘Gender at sea’, p. 58.

35 Kingsbury, ed., Records, i, p. 497.

36 The first two court books (28 Jan. 1606 – 14 Feb. 1615 and 31 Jan. 1615 – 28 Apr. 1619) were in the Virginia Company's possession in 1623, but no record of them afterwards has survived. See Kingsbury, ed., Records, i, pp. 22, 25. Note that Kingsbury mistakenly gives the end date of the second book as 28 July, rather than 28 April.

37 For the exchange of shares in the Virginia Company between 1615 and 1623, and women's shareholding, see Kingsbury, ed., Records, iii, pp. 58–66, 83.

38 Rabb, Enterprise and empire, p. 368; James McDermott, ‘Romney, Sir William (d. 1611)’, ODNB; Hiden, Martha W., ‘A voyage of fishing & discovery 1609’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 65 (1957), pp. 62–6, at p. 64Google Scholar; TNA, will of Sir William Romeny (sic), 9 May 1611, PROB 11/117/496.

39 Including an overseer of his will, Sir Thomas Myddelton, and the merchant Roger Dye, discussed below. See Guildhall Library (GL), Grocers’ Company court minute book, undated May 1611, CLC/L/GH/B/001/MS11588/002, fo. 632.

40 TNA, will of Robert Taylor, Mercer of London, 21 Oct. 1592, PROB 11/80/301; LMA, parish registers: St Magnus the Martyr, 5 Feb. 1582, P69/MAG/A/001/MS011361. On women's work with their male relations, Erickson, Amy Louise, ‘Married women's occupations in eighteenth-century London’, Continuity and Change, 32 (2008), pp. 267–307, at p. 290CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schmidt, Ariadne, ‘The profits of unpaid work. “Assisting labour” of women in the early modern urban Dutch economy’, History of the Family, 19 (2014), pp. 301–22, at p. 306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Grassby, Kinship and capitalism, p. 132.

42 TNA, will of Sir William Romeny (sic), 9 May 1611, PROB 11/117/496. Also, Erickson, Amy, Women and property in early modern England (London, 1993), p. 27Google Scholar; and Keene, D. J. and Harding, Vanessa, ‘St. Martin Pomary 95/13–15’, in Historical gazetteer of London before the Great Fire Cheapside; parishes of All Hallows Honey Lane, St Martin Pomary, St Mary Le Bow, St Mary Colechurch and St Pancras Soper Lane (London, 1987), pp. 169–79Google Scholar, available British History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-gazetteer-pre-fire/pp169-179. On widows continuing in trade, see Schmidt, ‘“Assisting labour”’, p. 315.

43 Froide, Silent partners, pp. 101, 106; Kesselring, Krista J. and Stretton, Tim, ‘Introduction: coverture and continuity’, in Kesselring, Krista J. and Stretton, Tim, eds., Married women and the law: coverture in England and the common law world (Montreal, 2013), p. 12Google Scholar; Erickson, Amy Louise, ‘Coverture and capitalism’, History Workshop Journal, 59 (2005), pp. 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McIntosh, Marjorie K., ‘The benefits and drawbacks of femme sole status in England, 1300–1600’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), pp. 410–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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45 Her dealing in sugar must have occurred sometime before 1620 when Roger Dye died. So although this case is undated, we can posit it was between 1611 and 1620. TNA, Parslow v. Romney, undated, C 2/JasI/P7/47; TNA, will of Sir William Romeny (sic), 9 May 1611, PROB 11/117/496; TNA, will of Roger Dye, Grocer of St Magnus, City of London, 18 Oct. 1620, PROB 11/136/321.

46 For discussion, see Erickson, ‘Married women's occupations’, p. 282.

47 TNA, Heath v. Romney, 7 Nov. 1613, C 2/JasI/H1/52, fo. 1.

48 Muldrew, ‘Contract in early modern England’, p. 53.

49 Membership to the Livery Companies was found using ‘The records of the London Livery Companies online’ (ROLLCO), www.londonroll.org; TNA, Heath v. Romney, 23 Nov. 1613, C 2/JasI/H1/52, fo. 2.

50 TNA, Parslow v. Romney, undated, C 2/JasI/P7/47.

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58 TNA, will of John West, 10 Sept. 1613, PROB 11/122/205; TNA, will of Richard Fust, Grocer of Saint Clement, City of London, 9 Mar. 1614, PROB 11/123/266; Sean Kelsey, ‘Conway, Edward, first Viscount Conway and first Viscount Killultagh (c. 1564–1631)’, ODNB.

59 For the marriage prospects of wealthy widows, see Grassby, Kinship and capitalism, p. 140. Quote from TNA, Graye Conyers to Francis Conyers, 13 Mar. 1614, Chiswick, State papers, 14/76, fo. 93.

60 It is difficult to distinguish whether it was her husband or stepson (of the same name) who also bought shares in the Virginia Company in 1609. A John West also invested in the Spanish (1604), Irish (1609), and Bermuda (1615) companies. It was certainly John West (the son) who invested in the Bermuda Company, because by this date his father was dead. See Rabb, Enterprise and empire, p. 400.

61 There are fifty-six livery companies listed. See The second charter of Virginia (1609), in Brown, ed., Genesis of the United States, i, pp. 206–37.

62 Mrs Boxe may have been the widow of Henry Boxe who witnessed John West's will. A Mr Boxe also mediated with the Grocers’ Company concerning Lady Conway's bequest. See TNA, will of Dame Katherine Viscountess Conway, widow, 19 July 1639, PROB 11/180/714; TNA, will of John West, 10 Sept. 1613, PROB 11/122/205; GL, Grocers’ Company court minute book, 22 Aug. 1639 – 22 Sept. 1639, CLC/L/GH/B/001/MS11588/003, fos. 640, 644–6. For women's material gifts to guild companies in this period, see Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin, ‘Gifting cultures and artisanal guilds in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century London’, Historical Journal, 60 (2017), pp. 865–87, at p. 880.

63 TNA, Kyte v. Grocers, 1677, C 7/200/142; Sherwood, ed., Endowed charities, pp. 237–8.

64 Archer, Ian, ‘The arts and acts of memorialization in early modern London’, in Merritt, J. F., ed., Imagining early modern London: perceptions and portrayals of the city from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 90Google Scholar.

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67 Moens, ed., Dutch Reformed Church, p. 211; Grell, Dutch church, pp. 52, 299. For Katherine Hueriblock's endowment, see TNA, will of Dame Katherine Viscountess Conway, 19 July 1639, PROB 11/180/714; and Norman, ed., Survey of London, vii, pp. 28–30.

68 TNA, Secretary Conway to Mrs Cole, 1 Dec. 1628, State papers, 16/122 fo. 1. Louisa Cool's father, Mathias de Lobel, was James VI and I's herbalist. At this date, she was recently widowed. Jacob Cool's family had settled in Lime Street, where they practised in the silk trade, and he was also made an elder of the Dutch church in 1624. After his death, the widowed Mrs Cool married Abraham Vanderdort in 1628, curator of the Royal Collection, under Charles I. See D. E. Allen, ‘L'Obel, Mathias de (1538–1616), botanist’; and Ole Peter Grell, ‘Cool, Jacob [Jacobus Colius; called Ortelianus] (1563–1628), scholar and writer’, ODNB. Also, Farquhar, Helen and Allen, Derek F., ‘Abraham Vanderdort and the coinage of Charles I’, Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society, 1 (1941), pp. 54–75Google Scholar.

69 Todt, Kim, ‘“Women are as knowing therein as the men”: Dutch women in early America’, in Foster, Thomas A., ed., Women in early America (London, 2015), pp. 43, 46–7Google Scholar. For the education of English women in business, see Anne. L. Murphy, ‘“You do manage it so well that I cannot do better”: the working life of Elizabeth Jeake of Rye (1667–1736)’, Women's History Review, https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2018.1455569, p. 9.

70 Korda, Natasha, ‘Froes, rebatoes and other “outlandish comodityes”: weaving alien women's work into the fabric of early modern material culture’, in Hamling, Tara and Richardson, Catherine, eds., Everyday objects: medieval and early modern material culture and its meanings (Farnham, 2010), pp. 95–6Google Scholar.

71 TNA, will of Catharyne Hendriex, 12 Feb. 1619, PROB 11/133; TNA, power of attorney from Sir Edward Conway … to Guillaume Van der Moyden, 30 Dec. 1619, State papers, 14/111, fo. 175. For her residence in London, see Kirk and Kirk, eds., Returns of aliens, ii, p. 470, iii, pp. 124, 126, 128–9.

72 Whittle, ‘Enterprising widows’, p. 288; Schmidt, ‘“Assisting labour”’, pp. 318–19; and Froide, Never married, pp. 106–7.

73 For the association between Petticoat Lane and those occupied in the silk industry, see ‘The Halifax estate in Spitalfields', in Sheppard, F. H. W., ed., Survey of London: volume 27, Spitalfields and Mile End New Town (London, 1957), pp. 237–41Google Scholar. Accessed via British History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol27/pp237-241.

74 Erickson, ‘Married women's occupations’, p. 286.

75 TNA, will of John West, 10 Sept. 1613, PROB 11/122/205.

76 Walsh, Lorena S., Motives of honor, pleasure, and profit: plantation management in the colonial Chesapeake, 1607–1763 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2010), pp. 65–6Google Scholar.

77 Grassby, Kinship and capitalism, pp. 92–3; Froide, Silent partners, pp. 101ff.

78 Rabb, Enterprise and empire, p. 66; and Paul Hunneyball, ‘Conway, Sir Edward I (c. 1563–1631)’, History of Parliament Online, www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/conway-sir-edward-i-1563-1631.

79 Cell, Gillian T., ‘The Newfoundland Company: a study of subscribers to a colonizing venture’, William and Mary Quarterly, 22 (1965), pp. 611–25, at p. 625CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 See The second charter of Virginia (1609), in Brown, ed., Genesis of the United States, i, pp. 206–37; TNA, will of Richard Fust, 9 Mar. 1614, PROB 11/123/266; TNA, Dr James Meddus to Secretary Conway, 26 July 1624, Fenchurch, State papers, 14/170, fo. 86.

81 Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State papers colonial, East Indies, ii, pp. 238–41; TNA, William Payne to Secretary Conway, 20 June 1626, London, State papers, 16/30, fo. 66.

82 TNA, William Payne to Dr James Meddus, 30 June 1628, Highgate, State papers, 16/108, fo. 126.

83 TNA, William Payne to Katherine Lady Conway, 2 Nov. 1627, n.p., State papers, 16/84, fo. 14.

84 TNA, Dr James Meddus to Katherine Viscountess Conway, 27 June 1628, Fenchurch, State papers, 16/108, fo. 80.

85 TNA, Dr James Meddus to Katherine Viscountess Conway, 25 July 1628, Fenchurch, State papers, 16/111, fo. 71.

86 See also Cell, Gillian T., English enterprise in Newfoundland, 1577–1660 (Toronto, ON, 1969), p. 78Google Scholar.

87 Froide, Silent partners, pp. 151, 176–7.

88 Sharpe, ‘Gender at sea’, pp. 62–3; Spicksley, ‘Female investor’, p. 289; Spicksley, ‘Single women’, p. 197; Todd, ‘Property and a woman's place’, p. 189.

89 See Ferrar papers, Magdalene College, Cambridge, annual accounts of earl of Southampton and Nicholas Ferrar, 22 May 1622 – 22 May 1623, no. 480; certificate of Virginia Company, 12 May 1623, no. 476; interest and warrant, 23 Dec. 1620 – 22 May 1622, no. 383. On women lending by bond, see Spicksley, ‘Single women’, p. 195; Froide, Never married, pp. 134–5.

90 Froide, Never married, p. 139.

91 City of London, Livery Companies Commission, iv, pp. 457–77; and Sherwood, ed., Endowed charities, pp. 502–3.

92 LMA, Bridewell court book, 26 July 1617 –13 Mar. 1626, CLC/275/MS33011/006; Coldham, Peter Wilson, Child apprentices in America from Christ's Hospital, London 1617–1778 (Baltimore, MD, 1990)Google Scholar. Also, Ewen, Misha, ‘“Poor soules”: migration, labor, and visions for commonwealth in Virginia’, in Horn, James, Mancall, Peter, and Musselwhite, Paul, eds., Virginia 1619: slavery and freedom in the making of English America (Chapel Hill, NC, forthcoming)Google Scholar; and Johnson, R. C., ‘The transportation of vagrant children from London to Virginia, 1618–1622’, in Reinmuth, Howard S., ed., Early Stuart studies: essays in honour of David Harris Wilson (Minneapolis, MN, 1970), p. 144Google Scholar.

93 Sandys was opposing his colleague in the Virginia Company, Sir Thomas Smythe, to represent Sandwich (Kent). See Andrew Thrush, ‘Sandys, Sir Edwin (1561–1629)’, History of Parliament Online, www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/sandys-sir-edwin-1561-1629.

94 For this attempt, see Kupperman, Jamestown project, p. 293; Horn, Adapting to a New World, pp. 55–6; Rabb, Theodore K., Jacobean gentleman: Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561–1629 (Chichester, 1998), pp. 329–30Google Scholar.

95 On women as active investors, see Sharpe, ‘Gender in the economy’, pp. 301–2.

96 Johnson, ‘Lotteries of the Virginia Company’, pp. 270ff; TNA, Fitzwilliam v. West, Jan. 1615, STAC 8/144/6, fos. 1–2. For women who defrauded lotteries during the Financial Revolution, see Froide, Silent partners, pp. 176–7.

97 Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, p. 33; and Kupperman, Jamestown project, p. 261.

98 TNA, Fitzwilliam v. West, Jan. 1615, STAC 8/144/6, fos. 1–2.

99 Selwood, Jacob, Diversity and difference in early modern London (Farnham, 2010), pp. 73–4Google Scholar.

100 Dean, ‘Elizabeth's lottery’, p. 591.

101 TNA, will of John West, 10 Sept. 1613, PROB 11/122/205.

102 New York Public Library, Richard Berkley to John Smyth, 3 Aug. 1633, MssCol 2799/42. For secrecy surrounding women's investments, see Froide, Silent partners, p. 71.

103 Katherine Hueriblock was said to be seventy-four when she died in 1639, and Rebecca Romney was described as an ‘ancient matron’ in 1642. Norman, ed., Survey of London, vii, pp. 28–30; Vicars, God on the mount, p. 128.